le and fall to the ground. As he picked it up his
attention was arrested by the handwriting and by the stamp. The stamp
was Egyptian and the writing was that of Maria Consuelo. He started,
tore open the envelope and took out a letter of many pages, written on
thin paper. At first he found it hard to follow the characters, and his
heart beat at a rate which annoyed him. He rose, walked the length of
the room and back again, sat down in another seat close to the lamp and
read the letter steadily from beginning to end.

"My Dear Friend--You may, perhaps, be surprised at hearing from me
after so long a time. I received your last letter. How long ago was
that? Twelve, fourteen, fifteen months? I do not know. It is as
well to forget, since I at least would rather not remember what you
wrote. And I write now--why? Simply because I have the impulse to
do so. That is the best of all reasons. I wish to hear from you,
which is selfish; and I wish to hear about you, which is not. Are
you still working at that business in which you were so much
interested? Or have you given it up and gone back to the life you
used to hate so thoroughly? I would like to know. Do you remember
how angry I was long ago, because you agreed to meet Del Ferice in
my drawing-room? I was very wrong, for the meeting led to many good
results. I like to think that you are not quite like all the young
men of your set, who do nothing--and cannot even do that
gracefully. I think you used those very words about yourself, once
upon a time. But you proved that you could live a very different
life if you chose. I hope you are living it still.

"And so poor Donna Tullia is dead--has been dead a year and a half!
I wrote Del Ferice a long letter when I got the news. He answered
me. He is not as bad as you used to think, for he was terribly
pained by his loss--I could see that well enough in what he wrote
though there was nothing exaggerated or desperate in the phrases.
In fact there were no phrases at all. I wish I had kept the letter
to send to you, but I never keep letters. Poor Donna Tullia! I
cannot imagine Rome without her. It would certainly not be the same
place to me, for she was uniformly kind and thoughtful where I was
concerned, whatever she may have been to others.

"Echoes reach me from time to time in different parts